2024 spitzack open doors woodcut woodblock mokuhanga seattle art artist print printmaking

A 2024 print built around the motif of open doors, suggesting passage or threshold as central subject matter. The architectural geometry of doorways—flat planes, parallel lines, defined edges—suits mokuhanga's reliance on cleanly carved blocks and registered impressions, where the kentō registration marks ensure that successive color passes align with precision. Door imagery in the Japanese print tradition appears throughout [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) of Edo townscapes and within the more abstracted compositions of sōsaku-hanga (the creative-print movement), where artists such as Munakata used the form symbolically. Spitzack's 2024 production includes several prints engaging with symbolic or psychological imagery rather than direct landscape, indicating a year in which his practice extended beyond observational subjects. The print was completed in the same period as his recognition at the International Mokuhanga Conference in Echizen, Japan.